Carnival of the Capitalists — Business Roundup

Welcome to the March 12, 2007 edition of Carnival of the Capitalists, a weekly roundup of links to blog writings by independent thinkers on business and economics topics. I am this week’s host.

Please show your support of the writers in this week’s Carnival by visiting their blogs and by pointing out this post to your readers. In the words of the Black Eyed Peas, let’s get it started:

Managing and Hiring – Some of the most intriguing posts in this week’s roundup, as a group, were about the people in our businesses — managing, hiring and promoting:

The Merely Good and the Really Great — Wilson Ng writes an excellent essay on understanding the difference between merely knowing a subject and mastering it, noting that some things are “easy to learn, difficult to master.” And as he explains, the rewards in life for mastering something and merely learning it are vastly different.

8 Common Mistakes Recruiters Make – Clint James, a senior at Oklahoma State University, explains what your poor employment interviewing skills feel like to job candidates. Yes, he’s talking about you, oh HR managers and hiring managers. Lots of great insights in this one about how NOT to represent your company.

Spider Sense — Big Picture Guy writes, “It’s a year and a half after the transfer and the new R&D director is clearly not working out. Thing is, the HR people think that if we let him go, he should pay back the cost of the move.” The Big Picture Small Office blog provides fascinating insight into the inner workings of a corporation — don’t miss this one.

Marketing and Sales - The largest group of posts in this week’s entries were roughly related to marketing and sales, an always popular category:

Blog Field Trip: Limited Floor Space — This post by Gracie offers an important lesson for bloggers and website owners alike: all that blog bling is preventing you from earning enough to buy real bling.

There aren’t many ways to reach a suspect — Jim Logan writes about B2B marketing and the pros and cons of various lead generation techniques. See his surprising comments about email marketing, in particular.

Your Right Hand Holds a Credit Card — Nina at QueerCents provides a study in how marketing can get us consumers to buy just about anything, as illustrated by the diamond right-hand ring.

Trust Amongst the Investment Bankers — Despite the title of the post, this is really a lesson in trust by any kind of outside service provider and the companies they sell to — or for that matter in your personal relationships — by author Charles H. Green.

Economics and Markets – Take a look at the big picture of the economy, the stock market, various other markets, and the topic of economics:

Financial Roadmap March 12 to 17, 2007 — Tom Hanna offers us a helpful chart showing all the reports and indices being announced this week that affect the market (and the big picture outlook), by day of the week. And Friday is Quadruple Witching Day.

Is the world really about to end? or… — If the recent drop in the U. S. stock market has you worried, Ed at Daily Dose of Optimism presents a fascinating chart showing that 2% declines on the S&P 500 are regular occurrences. Nevertheless, fear is a good thing — read why.

Woodrow Wilson Pleads the Fifth – SophistPundit gives us a book review of “What Has government Done With Our Money.” For those who are into economics and currency markets, this is an interesting read.

Handicapping the Carr-Benkler Wager — If you’re like me, you have never heard of the Carr Benkler wager. But I guarantee you will find this economics discussion by Mike Dewitt fascinating about the the gift economy and the future of sites like Digg and YouTube.

The Eye of the Storm — Insurance companies are abandoning places like Florida that are susceptible to hurricanes. InsureBlog’s Henry Stern has the story of a new carrier that’s just itchin’ to do business in one such state. But there’s a catch.

Honorable Mention for Most Interesting Blog Concept — It never ceases to amaze me what creative themes people develop entire blogs around. Honorable mention goes to two blog posts from uniquely-themed blogs, including our first one, which is a blog dedicated to tracking down investment opportunities in spam emails, and our second one, dedicated to starting and running laundromats:

Thank you for joining us today. And for all those who submitted entries, thank you for participating. Out of 50 submissions, I included 26 posts plus 2 Honorable Mentions. It was difficult to make decisions and sometimes small things were the determinants. For instance, if it appeared that your post had been included in another Carnival, such as Carnival of Entrepreneurship, I tended not to include the entry. So if your entry was not included today try again with another post next week.

Add a link to the Carnival of the Capitalists home page in your blogroll. Please also remember to write a short post linking to the weekly roundup posts. Spreading the word about Carnival of the Capitalists is half the battle of exposing blogs to new audiences.

Anita Campbell is the Founder and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses, and also serves as CEO of TweakYourBiz.com.

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